Poor Unions

With the MTA strike in full swing in New York City, I feel like it's time for a rant about the stupidity of unions.

There is a lot of rhetoric surrounding these strikes, and every time they happen, be it airline workers or city transit workers or garbage collection, the classical response is to ruminate on how inconvenienced we might be, but how the poor working man needs this to battle the oppressive tyranny of management. It's something most of us can sympathize with - people tend to vastly overrate their value and the compensation they deserve for their jobs.

So reality check time!

The average salary for a transit union worker is $48,000, with automatic 3% increases every year. The current proposal, that was rejected by the unions, was to increase the number of years someone had to be an employee before recieving the pension (50% of your salary for life) by five years, to 30. As it stands, the MTA stands to be fairly well screwed in the near future. People are living longer, and paying out pensions at the current rate will force fare hikes (as if $4 round trip for the subway wasn't already absurd) to finance.

Another group currently pissed off - auto workers - need to seriously reevaluate their current demands. A Chinese car company is going to begin selling in America within the next five years. Oh, and their car is going to cost half as much as anything made by GM/Chrystler/Ford - under $10,000 for